1.4.3-Ariverontherun
Brick!Club 1.4.3: The Lark Did the Thénardiers treat Cosette well until Fantine’s money and the money from selling the clothes was gone? That… sort of makes it worse. Imagine poor little Cosette not knowing why her guardians, who had been treating her nicely enough so far, have suddenly changed their attitudes toward her. And Cosette was dressed in the cast-offs of the Thénardier girls. I can’t really picture her wearing Azelma’s, since Azelma is younger than her and kids grow pretty quickly when they’re that little, but maybe Cosette was just super small for her age. The poor girl did eat worse than the cat, after all. If Cosette hadn’t been there, Eponine and Azelma would have gotten the blows along with the caresses. So presumably that’s what happens after Valjean takes Cosette away – Madame Thénardier starts to treat her own daughters like she used to treat Cosette. Poor Eponine and Azelma…. They’ve got some hard times ahead of them. The reaction of the townspeople doesn’t quite make sense to me. On the one hand, they’re admiring the Thénardiers for bringing up this apparently-abandoned child. But on the other, they have to notice that not-quite-five-year-old Cosette is running around doing household chores, sweeping the yard and the street, and carrying heavy loads. The sight of Cosette is described as “harrowing.” Didn’t anybody think to say, “Hey, maybe you should be a little nicer to the little girl”? Or did they just not want to intrude on their neighbors’ business? Fantine’s behind on her payments – this is the timeframe when she’s been fired from the factory, correct? So as Fantine became more and more destitute, so did Cosette. That’s not okay, Hugo. And again with the names. This time we’re talking about nicknames, and how people like to give “figurative names.” And it’s great that the people saw “trembling, frightened, and shivering” little Cosette, and just went “What should we do about that? Hey! Let’s call her the Lark!” Nice job, people. Also, how exactly is giving Cosette back to Fantine going to benefit Thénardier in any way other than not having to feed Cosette anymore? Sure, it’ll negatively impact Fantine, but Thénardier is hardly the type to worry about that. He won’t be getting Fantine’s money anymore, and he’ll have lost the work that Cosette does around the inn. If he’s making the threat to Fantine, that’s different, but I got the impression he was just stomping around the inn angrily shouting to himself. In other news, the Julie Rose translation informs us that “the greasy spoon” is doing badly. I’m not sure I would have understood that to be the inn, but it does lend a certain flavor to the idea of the inn, which I’m sure is what she was going for. Next up: the appearance of an unnamed man whom I’m sure is in no way Jean Valjean. *cough* Commentary Sarah1281 I think the attitude of the townspeople was the way it was because they thought Cosette had been abandoned. If they knew the truth that Fantine was working herself to the bone sending every last sous that they demanded, they’d be horrified (but probably less so if they knew Cosette was illegitimate). But since Cosette is just an abandoned child to them and, however the Thenardiers are treating her, they give her a roof over her head and food and don’t leave her to starve on the streets they are better people than the rest of the townsfolk who in their place would totally have just left her to die on the streets. I think they know that they wouldn’t take an extra abandoned child in and tend to their most basic of needs to stay alive and so are impressed and don’t expect anything more from them.